


Five Seconds

by blastitlouder



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Gen, Horror, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-07
Updated: 2013-03-07
Packaged: 2017-12-04 13:57:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/711500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blastitlouder/pseuds/blastitlouder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chromedome's left to his thoughts for longer than he'd like. Set directly after MTMTE #14, so read at your own risk. Spoilers ahead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Seconds

**Author's Note:**

> Just one more time:  
> THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR MTMTE #14'S ENDING IN THIS.  
> So don't come crying to me if you didn't pay attention to the tag and the summary. You'll likely need to have read it for context anyway.

Nausea, overwhelming nausea and disorientation and glitching sensors, _nothing made sense_ —

_Rewind._

Chromedome struggled onto his knees, Overlord’s tease sinking into his audios and into his addled processor. His vocalizer crackled and spat empty noise as he tried to protest, bargain with the Phase Sixer before that door shut. His legs were shaking and the headache was agonizing, but he couldn’t take time. Overlord was about to escape, the door was closing. He was going to massacre the entire ship.

The damning sound of pressurized door locks cut into his pain, his optics flickering with static as they rebooted. Five seconds to reach the door, but not really. He had to get up, he had to move. Before something happened to Rewind, he needed to get up and disengage the locks.

_Five._

He wasn’t going to forgive himself for this. It had been stupid, coming in here alone. It had seemed like such a solid plan. Get in and get out before Brainstorm and Drift noticed he was absent. He couldn’t trust them after all, not after all of this. Prowl too. The only one he could trust now was Rewind and he hadn’t been able to look him in the optics as he’d left him in the rec room before this. Chromedome wasn’t able to lay this at his pedes, this breach of his promise and this lie to the crew.

_Four._

He didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve that trusting visor turned his way or the soft servo on his arm, calming him down. Certainly not before and certainly not now. He was a liar and an oathbreaker. He managed to rise to his pedes, taking a staggering step towards the door. Prowl, in his traitorous threat, had been right. It wasn’t right to keep that information from Rewind, no matter how kind the omission had been to them, and it made Chromedome sicker than the deep reading had.

 _Three_.

Rewind would have understood the break of his promise. He wouldn’t have liked it, not by a long shot, and it would have been an argument to shake Ultra Magnus’ struts. But, in the end, he would have stood by Chromedome and kept him anchored in his dive. He would have been there to support his shaking steps out of the chamber and they both could have called Prowl and told him where to shove it. He forced his frame to comply and he bolted to the door, nearly bouncing off the control panel as he failed to stop quickly enough. It would’ve been worth the fight to see Prowl flip his desk again. Chromedome wished he’d been wise enough to realize that an hour ago.

 _Two_.

And now, once again, Rewind was going to pay for his stupid mistake. Only this time, it wasn’t going to be some nausea and flashbacks and bad stasis visions, no. There would be no peck on the cheek and no restless recharge next to the smaller mech as Chromedome relied on Rewind’s patience as he suffered the backlash of his decisions. The monsters were real this time and they weren’t locked away in the safety of Chromedome’s processor. His fingers shook on the keypad and he deleted several digits of the access code as he typed in an incorrect sequence. There was no time for mistakes. Every fraction of a second wasted was minutes outside. Minutes that Rewind didn’t have. He was so small compared to Chromedome, nearly a literal ant to a mech Magnus’ size. He’d be a speck to Overlord. A brightly targeted speck.

 _One_.

This was his fault. Rewind was going to die. No, worse than death. Chromedome had seen the files, seen the damage, seen the state of Fortress Maximus. Overlord was going to crush Rewind’s spirit, play with him like a doll and do so just as cruelly. His fingers dug into the keypad as he input the final string to unlock the doors. Chromedome was going to be free and that sweet mech was going to be pinned to the wall, his limbs torn and dangling and his visor cracked and energon pooled below him. His fault, all his fault, and Rewind would never know just how much of a failure he was. He would only know what Overlord would whisper and nail to his audios before he offlined.

 _Zero_.

Chromedome regretted a lot of things all of a sudden. He regretted not planning this better, regretted ever falling in with the Institute, regretted Prowl. Most of all, he regretted that Rewind had gotten involved with such a desperately terrible mech as he was.

The doors hissed open and he clambered into the hallway.


End file.
